Report claims SpaceX raising more outside funding (updated)

Update 8/20 7am: SpaceX late yesterday denied the TechCrunch report that it’s raising $200 million at a valuation of up to $10 billion. “SpaceX is not currently raising any funding, nor has any external valuation of that magnitude or higher been done,” SpaceX spokesperson John Taylor told Re/code, offering a similar denial to Bloomberg News.

Exactly how much money SpaceX is raising isn’t clear, but the TechCrunch report claimed it to be “somewhere in the region” of $200 million. Some previous investors, like Draper Fisher Jurvetson, are involved, as well as unnamed “international financiers.” If correct, the $200 million figure would be by far the largest outside investment in SpaceX. Besides founder Elon Musk, who put $100 million of his own money to start the company, SpaceX has raised several smaller rounds, including $50 million in 2010. According to TechCrunch’s own database, the last outside private investment in the company was in late 2012, of $30 million.

The private investments, though, pale compared to what SpaceX has received from the government. SpaceX received $396 million from NASA for its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement to develop the Falcon 9/Dragon system to transport cargo to and from the ISS. SpaceX has also won Commercial Crew Development round 2 (CCDev-2) and Commercial Crew Integrated Capability awards from NASA, valued at $75 million and $440 million, respectively to support development of a crewed version of Dragon. SpaceX also won a Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract to deliver cargo to and from the ISS, valued at $1.6 billion over the life of the contract, which covers eight 12 flights.

What SpaceX would do with that $200 million isn’t known. One possibility is that it would use the funds to support “secondary sales” of the stock, allowing existing investors or employees with equity in the company to cash out, which could be useful to some given that SpaceX’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has stated there are no plans for an initial public offering (IPO) of company stock in the foreseeable future.